On the Scholar Journals Pricing Crisis: When Israel Libraries will Talk about it?
Mallory Bowman and Chris Brown, Libraries face debt: Journal subscriptions may be in jeopardy, Louisville Cardinal Online, February 14, 2006. Excerpt by Peter Suber OA News Blog:
"University of Louisville students may soon lose access to a number of scholarly journals provided through the library system if funds cannot soon be obtained. Rising costs of subscriptions for both hard copies and electronic versions of scholarly journals and research databases have created budget woes for the library, which is now $500,000 - $600,000 behind in subscription payments, said U of L Dean of Libraries Hannelore Rader. While no subscriptions to scholarly journals have been permanently deactivated, if funds are not identified soon, cuts will have to be made, she said... “This year we thought, ‘Oh my God, can we get any more money?’” she said. “In order to pay for these in years to come, our base budget needs at least another million dollars.”... John Drees, director of U of L’s Office of Communication and Marketing, said the university is underfunded by $52 million compared to its average benchmark institutions....[Rader] said part of the problem is that she knows the exact cost of a subscription only when a bill hits her desk. “We really have no idea how much these journals are going to cost us from year to year,” she said. “Inflation for these journals is usually 10 to 20 percent every year, and we don’t know how much they are going to cost us until we get the invoices.”...Rader said the library’s materials budget was $7 million for the 2005-2006 fiscal year, and that the budget this year wouldn’t cover all the subscriptions that the library holds. She explained that large databases, especially those based outside of the United States, have a monopoly on many of the scholarly journals...
Mary Beth Thomson, associate dean for Collections and Technical Services at University of Kentucky Libraries, said her school’s libraries are facing the same situation. “This is a problem that’s not unique to U of L or UK. It’s not unique to the state of Kentucky. It’s a nationwide problem,” Thomson said. “The fact is that the cost of scholarly communication is increasing, and our budgets cannot keep up.”...Rader said the U of L and UK are working together to ensure that at least one of institutions has access to certain journals. “We’re trying to do something, [like] keeping one copy in the state,” she said. Students and faculty will have limited access to journal articles provided through interlibrary loan, however, since Rader says copyright laws strictly limit the number of articles that can be shared between schools."
"University of Louisville students may soon lose access to a number of scholarly journals provided through the library system if funds cannot soon be obtained. Rising costs of subscriptions for both hard copies and electronic versions of scholarly journals and research databases have created budget woes for the library, which is now $500,000 - $600,000 behind in subscription payments, said U of L Dean of Libraries Hannelore Rader. While no subscriptions to scholarly journals have been permanently deactivated, if funds are not identified soon, cuts will have to be made, she said... “This year we thought, ‘Oh my God, can we get any more money?’” she said. “In order to pay for these in years to come, our base budget needs at least another million dollars.”... John Drees, director of U of L’s Office of Communication and Marketing, said the university is underfunded by $52 million compared to its average benchmark institutions....[Rader] said part of the problem is that she knows the exact cost of a subscription only when a bill hits her desk. “We really have no idea how much these journals are going to cost us from year to year,” she said. “Inflation for these journals is usually 10 to 20 percent every year, and we don’t know how much they are going to cost us until we get the invoices.”...Rader said the library’s materials budget was $7 million for the 2005-2006 fiscal year, and that the budget this year wouldn’t cover all the subscriptions that the library holds. She explained that large databases, especially those based outside of the United States, have a monopoly on many of the scholarly journals...
Mary Beth Thomson, associate dean for Collections and Technical Services at University of Kentucky Libraries, said her school’s libraries are facing the same situation. “This is a problem that’s not unique to U of L or UK. It’s not unique to the state of Kentucky. It’s a nationwide problem,” Thomson said. “The fact is that the cost of scholarly communication is increasing, and our budgets cannot keep up.”...Rader said the U of L and UK are working together to ensure that at least one of institutions has access to certain journals. “We’re trying to do something, [like] keeping one copy in the state,” she said. Students and faculty will have limited access to journal articles provided through interlibrary loan, however, since Rader says copyright laws strictly limit the number of articles that can be shared between schools."
posted by Israel Scholar | 11.3.06
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